


Blinking Game

by bunnoculars



Category: SHINee
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-14
Updated: 2020-07-14
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:15:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25258312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bunnoculars/pseuds/bunnoculars
Summary: Jonghyun can't sleep because he can't stop staring at Taemin.
Relationships: Kim Jonghyun/Lee Taemin
Comments: 22
Kudos: 85





	Blinking Game

**Author's Note:**

> I just wrote this to prove to myself that I could still write Jonghyun's POV since it's been so long (and I also miss writing it a lot). idk why it is, but I feel like Jjong ends up with all the fluff haha.

Even after years of training from insomnia, Jonghyun’s eyes still adjust so slowly to the dark. At first, he sees nothing. Then outlines, vague, shadowy. Then...more outlines, less vague, less shadowy. Every time he has to blink it sets him back another second, and every sound he hears tells him what he just missed, blanket rustling, mattress groaning, Taemin sighing. As long his breathing doesn’t slow down and even out, it’s okay. Jonghyun isn’t too late.

Really. Taemin’s eyes are open, too.

At the sight of him this strange glow takes Jonghyun over, spreading from his heart to the tips of his toes and the roots of his hair, flattening all his defenses. Hiding his smile in the crook of his arm is useless, since Taemin will be able to hear it in his voice. “Sleep, Taeminnie.”

Taemin scrunches his face up at him. It’s dark and Jonghyun isn’t wearing his glasses, but those are all excuses he doesn’t need, when it’d look just as cute to him in broad daylight. And Taemin’s whining would probably make him just as weak.

“It’s hard when I can feel you staring at me.”

Jonghyun’s smile widens, and it sounds like the total lie it is when he says, “Aigoo. Hyung is sorry.”

Taemin forgives him anyway. “I guess it’s hard for you not to.” He smiles too, slow, secret. Dangerous. “I don’t get what’s so bad about sleeping together.”

He wouldn’t. When Jonghyun first asked him to go out with him, he said, _Don’t you think going on dates would be weird?_ and he gave his first kiss away to Jonghyun way before Jonghyun could figure out how it should go. Still…he’s so far away over there. Jonghyun can barely make out the mole on his nose or read the look on his face, and the rest of him is hidden under his blanket. And he’d be so warm and soft, and Jonghyun could watch from up close as he drifted off, and maybe Jonghyun would sleep better like that, too, even with Taemin suffocating him with his arms and leg thrown over his body, taking over his bed and crushing him into the wall.

…Even with Taemin smelling and looking and feeling like Taemin?

Jonghyun teeters. “Just sleeping?”

Taemin’s smile shows teeth. “Either way.”

“We’ve only been together for a week, Taemin-ah,” Jonghyun says, reminding himself as much as Taemin. That gets him another look from Taemin, not bratty like before, the kind that cracks open Jonghyun’s heart and does whatever it wants with his feelings.

“I’ve been waiting way longer than that.”

That’s why. At least part of it. The first time Taemin confessed to him was years and years ago, and Jonghyun got it all wrong. In his defense, Taemin was only seventeen and he picked the worst possible moment, in the car on the way home from filming their MV all night, in front of the others and Manager hyung, and Jonghyun was in love with someone else. Now he’s not, though, he’s so in love with Taemin it hurts, so he’s stuck hating his old self for all the time he wasted, on top of all the reasons he hated himself back then – making Taemin have to pretend not to cry, being too selfish to let Taemin avoid him, having to admit he loved Taemin less than Taemin loved him. He’s going to fix that last thing if it kills him. 

“We skipped so many steps already, it’s all like a blur,” Jonghyun says. They already live together, for one thing. And room together. And they’ve seen each other naked a thousand times. How many couples start off like that? Not to mention Taemin already knows him better than anyone else in the world, including parts of himself he never wanted Taemin to see. As for the parts he wants to show him…“Let’s take it slow the rest of the way.”

_I’ll make it good for you, Taeminnie. Not just your first time, everything, all your firsts. Including me, since I’m your first boyfriend~. I don’t want to make you have to say no to anything, I want to wait until I know exactly what you want._

Maybe Jonghyun should have tried saying some of that out loud, because Taemin’s eyes narrow stubbornly, and he says, “We used to sleep together all the time before we were dating, why is it different now? Let’s break up just for tonight.”

Just hearing those words come out of Taemin’s mouth sets Jonghyun’s nerves on fire, closing his chest in and forcing his voice out in a whine. “Taemin-ah~”

Taemin smiles again, eyes crinkling up. Jonghyun should have closed his, looking at Taemin makes everything so unfair. Like when Taemin says, “You got boners before too, if that’s what you’re worried about."

If Jonghyun told Taemin he should be worried instead, Taemin would probably tell him that he’s been fingering himself for years, and he knows Jonghyun knows all about his dildos from having to put them away before. The best Jonghyun can manage is, “So did you.”

It’s enough to make Taemin blink. That way only he does, shy and embarrassed, so hard it’s almost like a wince, so cute Jonghyun can feel his whole being curling up. Jonghyun has to bury his hand under his pillow to keep himself from reaching for the light, instead lying here wishing Taemin’s blush glowed in the dark so that he could see it spread over his cheeks and ears and down his neck, and. 

And Taemin is throwing back his blanket, telling Jonghyun once he’s halfway across the room already, “I never said I didn’t.” Jonghyun should be clamping down on his blanket, hanging on with all his might, rolling himself into a cocoon and holding out until the danger passes, but Taemin overpowers him with one single look. Jonghyun lifts his blanket and lets him climb in beside him, and then he lets himself pull him in close, too, slinging his arm over Taemin’s middle. If any of that is a mistake it doesn’t feel like one, not with Taemin cuddling up against him, so much softer and warmer than he’d thought, even. Maybe in the morning it will, when he’s squashed in the corner, agonizing between sneaking away to jerk off in the shower before he dies or staring at Taemin’s face for just one more second. Even now in the dark, he’s so pretty from this close up that Jonghyun is having a hard time remembering how to breathe, and his heart is so full it hurts.

Helpless to stop himself, he reaches up to stroke Taemin’s hair back from his face, like silk under his fingertips. “Don’t joke about things like breaking up, okay?”

“My mom jokes about divorcing my dad all the time,” Taemin says.

Jonghyun slips his hand down to pinch his cheek. “Because that’d never happen.”

“So you get it.”

More like Taemin doesn’t. Jonghyun was, is his first love. He’s watched Jonghyun fall in and out of love with other people, but he’s only ever seen his side when things fall apart. Jonghyun’s moods, his tears and his anger, the things he would’ve rather died than admit that Taemin probably guessed, and the things he whined about when he got drunk enough to forget how much he was hurting Taemin by letting him in. But if Jonghyun fucks this up like he’s fucked up every other relationship he’s ever been in, Taemin will see the other side for himself, and Jonghyun won’t be able to protect him, since he’ll be the one who put him there.

He just has to not fuck up. Ever. For now, that means holding Taemin’s hand to keep it out from under his shirt, scooting back until his butt hits the wall to keep their hips apart, pulling back from Taemin’s kisses at the first hint of tongue. And maybe tomorrow…

“Let’s tell the others about us,” Jonghyun says painfully.

Taemin’s mouth crimps into this smile, so shy Jonghyun almost feels wrong for looking. Almost. “Then we can just push our beds together.”

He's impossible. Jonghyun was thinking that they’d be able to hold hands and kiss outside of this room or Jonghyun’s car, that Kibum could judge Jonghyun for molesting Taemin instead of judging him for rejecting him, that Taemin could call Jonghyun his boyfriend and tell guys he has one when they hit on him, and Jonghyun is back to being selfish. Does it count as selfish to want to call date-like things dates? Or maybe even go on a real one. Taemin’s first. Weird doesn’t have to mean bad, Taemin already knows that without Jonghyun telling him, just like Jonghyun knows all Taemin's weaknesses. He could sit through a horror movie for Taemin's sake, or take him on a dog walk and share him with Roo and Adam and Eve. No, buy him food. Hanwoo. As much as he can eat. Jonghyun wouldn’t have been able to afford that back when Taemin first liked him, but now.

But now.

“It’s nice like this, anyway,” Jonghyun says, snuggling closer. Taemin copies him, until their noses brush and Jonghyun could count his eyelashes and it’s all over if he lets his eyes drop to his mouth, soft full lips curving into the smallest smile. Or not, maybe it’s safe after all. Taemin’s eyes are already closed, so Jonghyun can stop thinking about what he’d have to do to make them slide shut.

Without opening them, Taemin says, “Stop staring at me.”

Jonghyun never wants to figure out how. To wake up to Taemin tomorrow he has to fall asleep, though, and to fall asleep, he has to close his eyes.

And when he does finally, long after Taemin’s breathing has deepened and he’s grown heavy with sleep in his arms, and Jonghyun has etched every millimeter of his face into his heart, he sees Taemin again.


End file.
